Scientists in Germany switch on nuclear fusion experiment (Update)

February 3, 2016

This Dec. 10, 2015 file photo shows the nuclear fusion research center at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics where the first plasma has been produced at the "Wendelstein 7-X" in Greifswald, Germany. Scientists are poised to flip the switch on an experiment that could take them a step closer to the goal of generating clean and cheap nuclear power. Researchers at the institute plan to inject hydrogen into a doughnut-shaped device to produce a super-hot gas known as plasma. A test on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016, will show whether the 400-million-euro (US $ 435-million) device can handle hydrogen, which would be the fuel in future fusion reactors. (Stefan Sauer/dpa via AP, File)

Scientists in Germany flipped the switch Wednesday on an experiment they hope will advance the quest for nuclear fusion, considered a clean and safe form of nuclear power.

Following nine years of construction and testing, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald injected a tiny amount of hydrogen into a doughnut-shaped device—then zapped it with the equivalent of 6,000 microwave ovens.

The resulting super-hot gas, known as plasma, lasted just a fraction of a second before cooling down again, long enough for scientists to confidently declare the start of their experiment a success.

"Everything went well today," said Robert Wolf, a senior scientist involved with the project. "With a system as complex as this you have to make sure everything works perfectly and there's always a risk."

Among the difficulties is how to cool the complex arrangement of magnets required to keep the plasma floating inside the device, Wolf said. Scientists looked closely at the hiccups experienced during the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland more than five years ago to avoid similar mistakes, he said.

The experiment in Greifswald is part of a world-wide effort to harness nuclear fusion, a process in which atoms join at extremely high temperatures and release large amounts of energy that's similar to what occurs inside the sun.

German chancellor Angela Merkel prepares to press the start button next to the head of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics Sibylle Guenter , left, and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania governor, Erwin Sellering, right at the Wendelstein 7-X' nuclear fusion research center at the Max-Planck-Institut for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany Wednesday Feb. 3, 2016. Scientists flipped the switch on an experiment they hope will advance the quest for nuclear fusion, considered a clean and safe form of nuclear power. ( Bernd Wuestneck/dpa via AP)

Advocates acknowledge that the technology is probably many decades away, but argue that—once achieved—it could replace fossil fuels and conventional nuclear fission reactors.

Construction has already begun in southern France on ITER, a huge international research reactor that uses a strong electric current to trap plasma inside a doughnut-shaped device long enough for fusion to take place. The device, known as a tokamak, was conceived by Soviet physicists in the 1950s and is considered fairly easy to build, but extremely difficult to operate.

The team in Greifswald, a port city on Germany's Baltic coast, is focused on a rival technology invented by the American physicist Lyman Spitzer in 1950. Called a stellarator, the device has the same doughnut shape as a tokamak but uses a complicated system of magnetic coils instead of a current to achieve the same result.

The Greifswald device should be able to keep plasma in place for much longer than a tokamak, said Thomas Klinger, who heads the project.

"The stellarator is much calmer," he said in a telephone interview ahead of the start. "It's far harder to build, but easier to operate."

In this Dec. 10, 2015 file photo technical director Hans-Stephan Bosch holds up computer images showing the first plasma generated at the "Wendelstein 7-X" nuclear fusion research centre at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany. Scientists are poised to flip the switch on an experiment that could take them a step closer to the goal of generating clean and cheap nuclear power. Researchers at the institute plan to inject hydrogen into a doughnut-shaped device to produce a super-hot gas known as plasma. A test on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2016, will show whether the 400-million-euro (US $ 435-million) device can handle hydrogen, which would be the fuel in future fusion reactors. (Stefan Sauer/dpa via AP, File)

Known as the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, or W7-X, the 400-million-euro ($435 million) device was first fired up in December using helium, which is easier to heat. Helium also has the advantage of "cleaning" any minute dirt particles left behind during the construction of the device.

Over the coming years the device, which isn't designed to produce energy itself, will slowly increase the temperature and duration of the plasma with the goal of keeping it stable for 30 minutes, Wolf said.

"If we manage 2025, that's good. Earlier is even better," he said.

Scientists hope that the W7-X experiment will allow them to test many of the extreme conditions such devices will be subjected to if they are ever to generate power.

David Anderson, a professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin who isn't involved in the project, said the project in Greifswald looks promising so far.

German chancellor Angela Merkel presses the start bottom next to Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania governor, Erwin Sellering, right at the Wendelstein 7-X' nuclear fusion research center of the Max-Planck-Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald, Germany Wednesday Feb. 3, 2016. Scientists flipped the switch on an experiment they hope will advance the quest for nuclear fusion, considered a clean and safe form of nuclear power. ( Bernd Wuestneck/dpa via AP)
"The impressive results obtained in the startup of the machine were remarkable," he said in an email. "This is usually a difficult and arduous process. The speed with which W7-X became operational is a testament to the care and quality of the fabrication of the device and makes a very positive statement about the stellarator concept itself. W7-X is a truly remarkable achievement and the worldwide fusion community looks forward to many exciting results."

While critics have said the pursuit of nuclear fusion is an expensive waste of money that could be better spent on other projects, Germany has forged ahead in funding the Greifswald project, costs for which have reached €1.06 billion euros in the past 20 years if staff salaries are included.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who holds a doctorate in physics, personally pressed the button at Wednesday's launch.

"As an industrial nation we want to show that an affordable, safe, reliable and sustainable power supply is possible, without any loss of economic competitiveness," she said. "The advantages of fusion energy are obvious."

The Polish government, European Union and the U.S. Department of Energy also contributed funding for the project. The U.S. contribution, which included crucial error-correcting coils and imaging equipment, gives American scientists a chance to help develop cutting-edge technology and participate in the experiment, said Edmund J. Synakowski, the agency's associate director for fusion energy sciences.

Although there are about a dozen stellarator experiments around the world, including in the U.S., Japan, Australia and Europe, scientists say the Greifswald device is the first to match the performance of tokamaks.

"If the United States isn't at the table once scientists start asking questions that can only be answered here, then we're out of the game," Synakowski said.

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@Phys1, stop trolling critiques of other posters with your negative commentaries. They have become your signature "contributions". You do not know more than anyone here about science, as you presume to. If you have nothing positive to say, then just shut up.

You may notice that what he was critiqueing was a totally unfounded accusation of the people working hard on making something happen (and showing verifiable progress along the way).That is not a 'negative comment'. That is simply stating the verifiable fact that another poster's comment was stupid and/or malicious.

Added some (note some of the ones on your list are probably sockpuppets of others. I'm only keeping currently active posters on the list so as not to have it explode in size).

The Hate Brigade "Brown Shirts" forming a team & getting geared for additional action I see. Aw, you brown shirters, don't go offsite with your lists, there are those of us here who would like to click the Report feature for misusing this site as a tool for your own demented purposes.

Wow... another entertaining nite at the Phys.org speak easy... I don't keep a list... cuz I don't ignore.this place is like a box o chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get....Benni, of course, will find that foul mouthed...

If we had put this money and effort into less technical and extreme sources, we would have clean power today.

You basically have no idea what you're talking about.

The budget for this project has so far been 1.06 billion euros over an 18-year period, or 59 million a year.

Germany alone puts about 20 billion euros, and the United States spends roughly $8 billion, every year into renewable energy. That's just the energy subsidies, not research and development, not grid improvements, not storage systems or other infrastructure - all that money is simply the government buying electricity from large corporations owned by private investors, on taxpayer money, and then letting the same corporations sell the power again to customers on the grid.

The fusion projects are chump change compared to what is already being paid to renewable and "alternative" energy. Renewable energy is getting literally 1000 times more than fusion research, yet very little is actually happening.

On the contrary, if we spent as much money and effort on fusion power as we spend on renewable energy, we would have working fusion power in less than a decade. Probably in as little as five years.

We could have a thousand Wendelstein 7-X reactors being built and tested all around the world.

Fusion power is actually very very ill funded. The number seem big, but the projects are few and far between, and they're getting some petty change for a budget like a few million a year. The ITER is the biggest one going, and even it gets about the same budget as a single 1 GW wind farm gets in subsidies.

There's just a complete disconnect in the public imagination about what is big and what is small, what is simple and what is complex.

But it's as they say, penny wise, pound foolish. When the numbers get really big, and when they get diffused and spread over a number of smaller projects, people lose sight and track of what is actually being spent on what.

The cost of federal tax rebates on renewable energy projects alone would buy the US government about seven of these test reactors EVERY YEAR.

The only question would be if the little family business in Italy could crank the parts out fast enough to fill that order.

Advice from a poker player: If you want to bluff - don't give off tells.

Hey Stumpy/Phys 1...........advice from your loyal compadre........your new charade with that new sign-on handle trying to make us believe you've taken a 1st semester physics course has fallen flat. Of course we already knew that.

By the way, this Hate Brigade you're putting together........What has any of it got to do with the subject material of FUSION power? You spend more time here, working with Axemaster's foot soldiers, setting up hit-lists than you spend time talking about math & science. I guess it just comes back to the fact that you can only talk about that in which you are most proficient, purveying hatred with every post,.......you should try some science & math for a change, it just might change the perspective for reordering your priorities.

Take up a study of some of Einstein's Partial Differential Equations in his GR & give us daily reports on how you're making out.

Interesting point, Promile, but it is being overcome as we speak for the most part. In Nevada the fight is on, but so far, the solar folk have won in most other places. The Nevada PV Solar fight is interesting for other reasons, and you might want to look it up.

It is dollar versus dollar, and ego versus ego.

promile

I start to read a comment. If it starts with pretentious sanctimony, I lose interest. If it seems acrimony-less, I'll read further. If I ask questions, it means I want to learn more. If I make a statement, it means I want to learn more (OR- it can mean I accidentally read farther into it and became in engaged emotively. Sometimes you just can't help yourself...)I like to be maintain a humorous attitude cuz it makes me feel relaxed, which is puts me in a better frame of mind to learn... N'est pas?

Yep, all these free market mechanisms...;-) But try to think about this: if some less or more free energy source will get introduced at the market, then only few people can make money with it during start up, but the profit of very high number of people involved in established technologies will get immediately threatened instead. So that the very same free market mechanisms, which would draw the progress forward in distant past will inhibit the introduction of the new technology into market in its very beginning.

To quote Aerosmyth - Welcome to the Jungle...

Economics is applied psychology for personal benefit.

But, it has the side benefit of applying to all, if you're willing to go the extra mile.

.......and above, here they are, the Axemaster foot soldiers, all signed into the Stumpy/Phys 1 Hate Brigade ( I do notice a couple loyal soldiers are missing, probably have become casualties) OOOOps, one of the presumed casualties has signed in, updated the list-Ojorf. Deleted is pongobongo, my apologies the first time around..

Benni why don't you start your own blog ?crackpotters.org is still available.sole guideline: making sense will get you blacklisted.

STUMPO/Phys 1.............I'm just following your lead !!!! You do such a superlative job of setting examples of conduct. I mean jeepers creepers, someone with your proficiency in "hate skills" is one to be emulated. Let me see now, with a name like Stumpy, I can only imagine how frequently you look in a mirror & wished that 80% of what you see was missing.

Benni, am I unworthy of your scorn?

Shucks, I can't even be bad good.

geek, I didn't notice you on the Stumpo/axemaster Hate List when I copied it this morning. You gotta show up there first, then I will bestow the honor.

Viko gets hope from reading about pillars of smoke by day and fire by night. Actually that would be very real evidence that a foreign army was conducting a genocidal rampage of death and destruction through your hinterland.

Somebody had to do it eh viko? But nobodys that immoral unless they have god on their side.

Our alternative and renewable sources will save us

-But who will save us from the psychopaths who waste and ruin far more?

STUMPO/Phys 1.............I'm just following your lead !!!! You do such a superlative job of setting examples of conduct. I mean jeepers creepers, someone with your proficiency in "hate skills" is one to be emulated.

His skills our only grumpy. YOURS are hate.

Let me see now, with a name like Stumpy, I can only imagine how frequently you look in a mirror ...

With a name like Benni... hmmm ...Kinda like you and your electric boots and mohair suit? Too 80's glammy.

Ahh .. The influx of caffeine and I'm alert and more keenly aware of stimuli. Feedback systems kick in and pattern recognition pathways confirm that I am. Knowing that soon I must travel to complete a tedious task I suddenly feel blue. Do androids dream of electric sheep?

Blueness as an attribute of colour? If I say a colour is 'sort of blue', is that blueness verbalised?

As for nuclear fusion (back on topic) ... Tell them we already got one.

Just a few decent people having small talk in an empty room; this article is over 5 days old. If the conversation we had attracted your curiosity and gave you the motivation to read the article, how can it be a pointless? It kept it on the spotlight a little longer.

Sure this experiment is another small step toward sustained fusion but W7X is more about understanding the dynamics of long duration plasma discharge at 10e7 Kelvin than the study of fusion per se; there will never be any D-T tests in this machine.

If you want to know more about it, read this great article; it is about the historic and the construction of this great experimental endeavour. http://www.scienc...r-fusion